


Stages of Grief

by ginkyou



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Five Stages of Grief, Gen, Hallucinations, How Do I Tag This, Survival, Trapped
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-18
Updated: 2017-05-18
Packaged: 2018-11-02 05:33:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10938030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ginkyou/pseuds/ginkyou
Summary: On how the Ratman came to be. An exploration of Doug Rattmann's past, present and future.





	Stages of Grief

**Author's Note:**

> Written on about four hours of sleep so please forgive any spelling/grammar mistakes. This kind of ran away from me as I was writing it so it doesn't 100% match up with Lab Rat, but I did my best.  
> Unbeta'd as always. See the end for CWs/TWs.

**0.**

Doug Rattmann didn’t like working at Aperture Science. Sure, the pay was good, the projects were interesting, and unlike most other companies Aperture didn’t even pretend to hide the fact that every single employee was being constantly monitored so he had to give them points for honesty. Still, none of that could ever truly made up for the murderous AI in the basement, just waiting to be activated.

He hadn't always dreaded work. In the beginning, in fact, he very much enjoyed working at the company and getting to be involved in various crazy inventions. But in recent years, Doug reminisced as he sat in his car in the employee parking lot, his dislike for his employer had grown steadily. As the first ceremonial activation of the AI had drawn nearer, he had found himself getting to work later and later. Almost every day he ended up arriving to a full parking lot. He found himself purposefully idling on his commute, turning around after making it halfway to fetch a forgotten pen, or deciding his sandwich wasn’t good enough and making another, and then throwing that one out as well. If it went on like this, he soon would have no choice but to tell his treatment team about it. He frowned at the thought.

At least he had managed to miss the first round of daily testing assignments, a process he always feared. The last time anyone from his department had been selected for it, the coworker they’d received back had been too similar to jellyfish to continue to do any kind of programming. The testing wasn’t really what had left him pondering the past in his car, though. It was something much bigger, something he very much did not want to face: the big day had come. After decades of work, GLaDOS would finally be officially activated. No more test runs, no more hitting the kill switch after less than a fraction of a second had passed. They would finally unleash the beast, and Doug had the terrible feeling that it would devour them all.

He looked at his hands, resting on the steering wheel. He couldn’t avoid it any longer. Unable to stall the inevitable, Doug grabbed his backpack, checked if his employee badge was fastened to his shirt, and got out of the car.

 

All cubicles were empty except for his, computers abandoned as fathers excitedly flocked to the Central AI Chamber to watch the activation of GLaDOS with a horde of gleeful little girls.

Doug didn’t have a daughter, didn’t like children, and didn’t trust the AI. Instead, he did what he did every day: his job. Programming was tedious, headache-inducing, and he loved every second of it. The bug he had been trying to fix had proven quite resilient, but the silence brought on by all his coworkers attending the activation thankfully let him focus entirely on the task at hand, all distractions gone.

As no one was quite sure how much computing power would be needed in case the AI did go rogue, employees had been instructed to cease their work at 11:50am and wait until further instructions to continue with their jobs. At 11:45, Doug got up to refill his coffee mug. He liked to get his coffee when nobody else was in the kitchen because every time he used the coffee machine, he first had to check it for any government tampering. You could never be too careful, no matter what his treatment team said. Just before 11:50, he sat back down at his desk, saved his work and took out his sandwich. This was another ritual his treatment hadn’t managed to convince him to give up yet. There was no way they could make him eat at the company cafeteria. This was Aperture Science after all, where Science was spelled with a capital "S" and an “all employees must participate in mandatory testing and experimental research”. No, he would much rather stick to his own, albeit bland, lunch.

11:58. Doug inspected his lunch. The sandwich looked a bit sad, having been squashed under a book and a clipboard in his backpack. He took a bite of it and discovered that it nevertheless tasted fine.

11:59. In lieu of anything else to do, Doug let his computer list all the files in the C:/ directory. He aimlessly looked at the properties of some of them. Nothing about them was particularly interesting. He dropped a couple of breadcrumbs onto the keyboard and more or less unsuccessfully tried to pick them out from between the keys.

12:00. The power went off.

 

**1: Denial.**

“HELP,” screamed the wall in bold capital letters. Doug was almost proud of his work. He considered adding an explanatory “I am trapped in here” or something similar under it but decided against it - surely the word “help” by itself was evocative enough to explain his situation.

He hadn’t even been surprised when the entire complex had gone into lockdown. He had known it all along after all, he had told everybody even though nobody had ever decided to listen. Now the AI had taken over and they were all stuck down here. But it wouldn’t be for long. Hundreds of people were trapped in the complex with him, and either someone on the outside would notice or he would meet someone else and they’d manage to find their way out of the facility together. Hell, he knew that there was a number of children on the premises and there was absolutely no way their mothers were just going to ignore their disappearances.

With GLaDOS having decided to lock them all up in their own facility it would not be easy for help to reach them, but that didn't mean it was impossible. Any door could be torn down and any computer could be shut off. He knew that all of his colleagues were already working furiously towards a solution, hammering out line after line of code to reign in the glitchy AI, and if they hadn’t managed to fix the problem in a day or two, the outside world would intervene. For now, he just had to keep calm and do his best to help the cause: make sure that any outside forces that entered the building knew that the people in it were, in fact, still alive. For this, the can of paint and paintbrush he had found in a janitor’s closet near his cubicle came in quite handy. He couldn’t really do much else because all internal communications seemed to have been shut off, but he still felt good about himself. He had been right all along, and when everyone was free, they sure as hell wouldn’t make fun of him for being paranoid any longer.

He still hadn’t managed to make himself believe that any of it was actually real when he saw the bodies.

 

**2: Anger.**

Doug dropped a wrench into the whirring fan. Sparks flew everywhere. He sprung back, his foot accidentally kicking an open can of beans over and spilling its contents everywhere. For a brief, almost comedic moment, the fan flung the beans everywhere, hitting Doug in the face and splattering them over his clothes, then the substance made its way into the core of the computer and with a loud **bang** the entire apparatus shut off. Doug watched in disbelief as the fan slowed to a halt, half-heartedly flinging a couple more beans at him, and finally stopped moving altogether. All that was left of his plan to feed himself was a dead, half opened, bean-covered computer and an empty can.

After a brief moment he decided that just staring at the sad remnants of his dinner wasn’t enough. He kicked the computer to see if it would make him feel any better. It just made him feel worse. He kicked it again. Then again. Then again, and again, and again, faster and faster, his muscles tightening and his vision blurring as the release of months of pent-up rage took over him. “This isn’t fair!” he screamed, picking up the empty can and throwing it at the wall. “This isn’t FAIR!” He picked up the ruined computer and hurled it at the ground, shattering it. “I’m just a scientist! I didn’t deserve this! I don’t fucking” - a container full of sour milk went flying against the wall - “deserve any of this!” He kicked another opened can of beans, still full, against the propped-open test chamber door, sending it and its contents flying into the test chamber beyond it. Before he could come up with any more original curses, the sound of a turret falling over with an offended, high-pitched yelp made Doug freeze. He instinctively dove behind a stack of storage cubes. Only a heartbeat later, the test chamber was filled with flying bullets, pieces of the chamber walls flying into the maintenance area Doug was hiding in. The noise was deafening. Doug cowered with his hands pressed against his ears and his teeth gritted, his entire body shaking, all rage forgotten. Nothing but fear was on his mind now, pure terror at the sound of the dying, screaming turret. He remained frozen in his position even after the noise died down, heartbeat hammering in his head and fingers digging into his skin. Finally, his heart, too, slowed down. The world slowly, shakily, returned to normal. And as it did, Doug Rattmann realized that _this_ truly was his normal now. He was trapped in here.

He had been trapped from the moment he first set foot in this cursed facility, and he would live here until the end of his days. When he would die, his body would decompose along with the rest of the facility, falling apart where no human eye would ever see him again. He had done all he could, even when he had found himself faced with the bloated corpses of his coworkers he still hadn’t surrendered himself to GLaDOS, no, he stood fast and strong and had continued to survive, but for what? Even his genius idea, his ultimate push against the AI had done nothing. Chell couldn’t save him, nobody could, it was obvious because he was _still fucking trapped down here_.

All he could do for the rest of his life was run and hide and pray to god that GLaDOS wouldn’t see him, but oh god, the only god that reigned here was GLaDOS and She was cruel. For the first time since the facility had gone into lockdown, Doug Rattmann took a deep, shaking breath and started to cry.

 

**3: Bargaining.**

On what must have been the end of his fifth month in the facility, GLaDOS reached down from her concrete-walled sky and gave Doug Rattmann the Companion Cube. It was more than he ever could have asked for. Sure, he had technically _found_ the Cube amidst a sea of identical cubes in an abandoned storage room that not even GLaDOS’s watchful eyes could see, but this was Her world where things went according to Her plan so he knew better than to believe She hadn’t intended for him to find it there. He had accepted Her gift with the tearful happiness of a devout believer. Coincidentally, he had also hidden his medication in his locker right around that time.

“Mercy”, Doug said out loud to nobody in particular as he caressed the Cube’s smooth edges. As if in response, two panels on the wall next to him came alive for a brief moment and changed places for no apparent reasons. Doug nodded excitedly at this. “This must mean She can feel mercy!” He felt giddy. Turning around, he tied the Cube to his back with some wires he had found and smiled proudly at how well the knot held. “Yes,” he said again and stood up with renewed energy. “She’s merciful, She must be.” His head spun. He grinned. He didn’t know what he had done to deserve this, but somehow he had finally managed to undo the sins that led him to this place. All he had to do now was ask Her, and then all this would be over. He would be free.

That night, as he tossed on his crude paper bed, GLaDOS came to him. She lifted him up, up, through miles and miles of chambers and tubes and never tiring machinery, into Her chamber. He had almost forgotten what Her body looked like. It hung from the ceiling with the awe-inspiring power of an ancient giant, unexplainable and beautiful, all smooth and chrome and pure, icy terror. She brought him face to face with Her and he almost cried, wanting to shy away from Her godlike power, but She did not let him. Her eye narrowed on him and after an eternity of burning him with Her gaze, She spoke. “There is nothing you can do,” She said, “to make me spare you.” Doug’s body shook. “There is nothing you can do. There is nothing you can give me. I want you dead. I have nothing but hate for you inside me. 99.9987% of my computing power is dedicated solely to hating you.”

“Please,” he somehow managed to say, his tongue heavy with fear and his throat tight and dry, “All I want is a life without pain.”

“Tough,” GLaDOS replied.

When he awoke that morning, more than any other morning, Doug wished he was dead.

 

**4: Depression.**

Soon after She had spoken to him, Doug stopped counting the days. They still ticked by on office clocks and desktop monitors but the timekeeping of these machines was far more precise than his would ever be, and She would keep them running for eons longer than he was going to be alive. Besides, what good did keeping track of passing days do when he lived in a world where no night ever came because the lights were always on?

One day, wandering through abandoned offices with no direction or reason, he saw the moon. A part of the office panelling had broken away - had it really been that long, he pondered as he stared at it - and through some miracle the shifting contents of the facility had positioned themselves just right that its light managed to shine all the way down to where he was standing, gazing at it in awe. It was so close he could almost taste it. He wanted to reach up and swallow it whole and hopefully die just like that old man had done, the one whose fault this whole mess had been in the first place. But as he stretched his arm, his fingertips almost reaching the glowing orb, the chambers above him arose from their slumber with a metallic screech and moved, blocking his view.

He sat there for a long, long time afterwards, staring at the hole in the ceiling. The facility creaked and shifted around him and there he sat, trapped in time along with the rest of the maintenance area, forever untouched, dust slowly settling on mechanical keyboards and dirty coffee mugs. He thought about Her taunting him, making him question his reality whenever he came close enough to her chambers for Her to feel him. He thought about the Cube. He thought about life. He thought about how, truly, there was nothing he had left to live for. Not even staining GLaDOS’s pristinely white chambers with his paint-covered hands could bring him joy anymore. He could defile Her all he wanted but She would never even notice, She was too far above him, concerned with things that were so much bigger than him for Her to even register his markings. It was a silent, futile protest. His _life_ was nothing but a futile protest.

He opened the knot that secured the Cube to his back and let it drop to the floor. Finally averting his eyes from where the moon had been, he curled up around the Cube. Long since over were the days of hope, of believing that anyone would rescue him. Even human tenacity could help him no longer. All he had done, he realized as he pressed his forehead against the Cube, was send the girl off to die.

 

**5: Acceptance.**

The end was near. He could feel it. He had spent so long lying in his den, not eating, not drinking, just staring at the radio until it finally happened. Amidst the static crackling from the speakers, he had heard the voice of the god of physics, and the voice had screamed at him: **THE  END  IS  NEAR**. He had no reason to doubt it.

The Companion Cube whispered urgency into his mind as he climbed up a staircase, not even stopping to close the door behind him. _Hurry, hurry, hurry_ , it said, _she is coming_ . He could _feel_ her presence, he sensed the irregular movement of atoms around him as she moved through the facility and he heard her heartbeat in his veins. He bolted around a corner. She was real, she was alive, she was made of flesh and blood and he was, too. The end was near. And as he turned another corner there, finally, stood Chell, her orange jumpsuit beaming against the white panels of the testing chamber, and for the first time in uncountable months, the Ratman felt deeply, truly, happy.

The end had come, and it was good.

**Author's Note:**

> CWs/TWs: mental illness (depression, schizophrenia), referenced drug usage to combat said mental illness, hallucinations, suicidal thoughts


End file.
